


The Eridium Mining Deal

by HazelNeedsSomeHelp



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, vaughn is sad af
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:49:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28653048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelNeedsSomeHelp/pseuds/HazelNeedsSomeHelp
Summary: Vaughn remembers the eridium mining deal, and he wishes he didn't.





	The Eridium Mining Deal

Vaughn still dreams about it, the eridium mining deal. He wasn't the one to break the news to all those poor families that toiled away their lives away in the mines, only to be told they were all being tossed out and uprooted from their homes. No, but him and Rhys were still there. They may have made the deal and got all the benefits from it, but a "professional" spokesperson always does the talking, while the important guys sit behind him and watch their work pay off.

Vaughn still remembers their faces. Parents burst into tears, yelling obscenities and hurling their rage at the Hyperion employees, small children clung to their mothers, their wide eyes didn't understand what was happening. He remembered a certain person, an older woman who looked like she'd fought through hell and more, stomped up to the spokesperson and told him off. Ripped him to shreds for being an awful person. And what did he do about it? He pulled a pistol from his belt and shot her in the forehead, letting out a chuckle and an "any more questions?" 

Vaughn felt sick to his stomach. He did then, and he still does now, just thinking of it. He knew Hyperion was no short of violent-- I mean, look at this world-- but seeing it so close, so mercilessly. It made the accountant question his choices with the company. But Rhys patted his shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile, and he pushed those thoughts away and focused on their bright future. 

But now, in the present, as he tosses and turns in a lumpy bed at Roland's Rest, he can't push the thoughts away. He ruined lives. And not even just of those people on Pandora, also of his own coworkers. The amount of backs he had to metaphorically stab, and the amount of backs he had to pay to literally stab, would haunt his memories for the rest of his life. Because ruining the lives of a few hundred-- no, thousand, now that he thinks of it-- strangers on a shitshow of a planet? It hurts, sure, but the lives of coworkers? These were people Vaughn worked and lived alongside, people he befriended and went to lunch with, people he bought Mercenary's Day gifts for and went to birthday parties for. These lives were personal, and that made it hurt so much worse. He could never see these people again, never have idle chat over coffee with, because most of them are dead now. 

To say Vaughn felt like the worst person in the galaxy over it almost made him sound good. He could never see himself the same. Even now, with a new look and new personality and new life, with being nothing like the man he was five years ago, he was still carrying around those memories, and they dragged him back to that corporate hell whenever he shut his eyes. 

He wished he could apologize to those families, the ones he hurt, but he knew it would do no good. Most of them were probably dead, anyways. And what's an apology gonna do for them? Hey, yeah, sorry I took away your job and home and left you for dead in the desert full of skags and bandits, I kind of wanted a promotion and that was my surefire way of getting it. He never even got the promotion. 

Only a couple of years after that deal, Vasquez screwed over Rhys, and that led to a trainwreck that ended in Helios falling from the sky. Vaughn could never say he's sorry now. Not that he ever could then. But it hurts worse, and that pain will never cease.


End file.
